OPINION: Baby in dumpster should lead to systemic change

A newborn baby was found dead in the dumpster 15 feet from our New Mexico Appleseed office, buried in a casket of trash — the body exhumed by a homeless person searching for food. The baby’s mother was likely wandering the city, bleeding and in pain after giving birth in unimaginable conditions. Maybe her milk was coming in with the pain of a thousand needles — a feeling postpartum moms know too well. Maybe she was sitting lost on a curb, in a park or under a bridge. We don’t know if she was using substances at the time, but odds are that is the case. In today’s Albuquerque, that’s not hard to picture. Even if they’re lucky enough to reach a hospital, they’re at risk of being discharged to the street.

“Put this mom in jail. That’s where she belongs,” might’ve been your first thought. I don’t blame you. It’s horrifying and hard to understand. But blame isn’t an actionable solution. Moral outrage is tempting but irrelevant. It won’t stop the endless conveyor belt of broken children, addicted moms, homelessness, crime, poverty and trauma.

New Mexico Appleseed has spent the past 16 years generating research-based policies with exponential returns on investment. Our mission is to disrupt the cycle of trauma and its devastating impact. We’ve led the way nationally — boosting graduation rates for homeless high schoolers, securing free breakfast for all high-poverty schools, ending lunch shaming and launching the Family Success Lab at the New Mexico Department of Health to focus on our most vulnerable families.

Clearly, this baby’s death is a brutal reminder of how far we still have to go. But it’s also a reminder of the opportunities we are missing that our right in front of our faces.

Pregnant women are the foundation on which every child’s life is built. They are the tipping point. We already know what happens when a pregnant mother is living in squalor, with no support and using substances. If we want to make a permanent and dramatic difference in the outcomes of our state from any perspective, be it economic, educational, poverty, criminal or health, we have to focus cost-effective resources on this one moment — pregnancy in the context of substance use and poverty. That’s when we can change everything for the mom and future baby.

We know that the cost of doing nothing far outweighs the cost of doing something effective. The good news is that we have many of the answers to what is effective. New Mexico Appleseed is building a policy slate to hit a generational reset button and build a healthy, stable foundation — everything the baby left in the dumpster didn’t have.

• Basic Income for Baby Success (BIBS): A first-of-its-kind intervention still in the design phase, BIBS will combine evidence-based cash support with evidence-based addiction treatment to pregnant women — a cost-effective path to reducing infant and maternal mortality and the Children, Youth and Families Department’s Child Protective Services involvement.
• WIC expansion and access: WIC is a federal prenatal-to-5 nutritional support program that is dreadfully undersubscribed in the state. Even when pregnant women and newborns are able to access WIC, they often stop using it at around age 1. We’re working with communities all over the state to increase its use while defending this critical program from federal funding threats.
• Contingency management: A proven behavioral tool offering small, immediate rewards for meeting addiction goals — like clean drug screens. It works, it’s simple and it saves lives. If it’s possible to decrease or eliminate substance use during pregnancy, fewer babies will be born substance-exposed, and fewer children will be a risk of increased meal treatment due to substance using parent.

We can break this cycle. We can build lives where babies grow up with stability, not trauma. Support New Mexico Appleseed’s efforts to change policies that change lives.

If only we’d reached that mother — so close to our office and to our hearts. Let’s not wait for the next one.